Sonos Execs Launched Ill-Received App Despite Employee Protests

[KRBM]

I’m a Sonos fanboy and this mess really hurts. Reading the story, their lawyer is STILL lying. Someone knew about the issues, they just chose to not listen. CEO needs to be gone and a house cleaning after of everyone that let this happen. They just kept kicking the can.

What do you mean with “after of”? Learning English here.

 

[joecomo]

Why doesn’t this surprise me

 

[JuicyGoomba]

The writing was on the wall with the whole S1/S2 app debacle for legacy devices.

If you continued to invest in more Sonos devices after this, then you only have yourself to blame.

By the sounds of things this company is one bad financial year away from ceasing all trading and becoming a patent troll.

 

[darkpaw]

If you're planning to release a completely overhauled app to avoid bothering to fix the technical debt, then you do this all completely fresh. You don't re-use the old systems and servers in case something goes wrong. You leave the old systems up and running, and make the old and new apps both work as they're supposed to.

What Sonos did here was fail to listen to the tech people who know what they're doing.

How many software development teams have I been a part of where the project manager doesn't understand the tech, but just does what the business wants? Too many to count.

I have never owned a Sonos product, and based on this debacle, I never will.

 

[Rradcircless]

Not like I have room for the Sonos era 300, but I was quite interested in it. But the bad press around the app was very off putting, despite Sonos execs trying to lure newbies like me.

Edit: missing word.

 

[wanha]

They should have taken a page from Apple's playbook and worked another angle -- add features that could run on devices 2-7 years old but make them exclusive to the newest model. By exploiting their customers like Apple, they will get some backlash, but at least the older devices will continue to work. Apple usually knows how to screw their customers just right to benefit themselves. Many customers will even relish in the punishment and turn around to help Apple rebuke dissenters. Sonos screwed their customers the wrong way and ended up screwing themselves.

You're right, Apple does do some not so great things for their customers.

They also do some pretty great things for their customers - like adding hearing aid functionality to 2+ year old AirPods Pro 2's for free rather than making them exclusive to APP3's to drive more sales, to just name an example.

IOW, let us not pretend Apple is purely a taker and we're all a bunch of helpless victims.

 

[wanha]

What's crazy is that this isn't even the first time I've seen a company decide to make their product vastly inferior as a way to cope with "technical debt." Is it that difficult to hire mildly competent people to keep infrastructure up to date and working smoothly, or does spending money on that sort of thing eat into the executives' compensation too much? 🤪

I think it's largely driven by the leadership of the company not really being core users of the product and thus lacking an understanding of the impact of their decisions.

I suppose that's what happens when it's leadership by spreadsheet.

Also, in my experience, SW development is more complicated and difficult than many lay-people understand, so the process is often underestimated and mismanaged from the onset.

 

[wanha]

SONOS doesn't have a solid or big enough software team and also doesn't have the resources.
A proof of this is that the macOS app is still Intel only after more than three years since the introduction of M Macs.
For SONOS there will be only one way to sustain software development: subscription
It's impossible for a company to sell a 300-500 dollars product and maintain it for 8 to 10 years for free.
And the incomes from the higher priced products are also not enough in this equation.
It's always necessary to take in account that SONOS is a relatively small company with a small number of niche products offering.
SONOS is not Pioneer or SONY.

SONOS is a relatively small company as you say and I'm surprised a big player hasn't bought them yet.

 

[wanha]

Couple of interesting things about the article:

1. there's no mention of Sonos betting the farm on Flutter in order to create a cross-platform app for cheaper. Clearly not the best idea.

2. Sonos' lead council's "investigation" into all this is just a way to cover their behinds, nothing more. Even if you take them at their word that it was a genuine investigation, you can't escape the fact that it was completely botched and the person running it didn't know their knee from their elbow.

 

[svish]

Good article. Hopefully the app gets fixed.

 

[Alpha-Sphere]

In the mean time I still don't really get the attraction of a Sonos speaker. At the office we have a bunch of them and I can't even use them to view a video. It's like giving me a pen that only works with one type of notebook. It's a pen, I should be able to write on anything with it.

 

[DownUnderDan]

So it was a management cockup and through sheer force of will they would make it work. Which of course they didn't. Won't stop the executive bonuses of course as that requires taking responsibility for poor leadership and that's not a management thing anymore.

 

[turbo79]

If you want to see what weakness looks like, visit https://investors.sonos.com/corporate-governance/default.aspx and click the Board of Directors tab.

 

[krakman]

Personally I don't get what is so good about these things?

We have 3 Sonos speakers in the house (wife's choice) but hardly ever use the app.

Luckily the speakers support Alexa, otherwise they would be in the bin.

 

[Robert.Walter]

Ignoring advice, warnings and pleas from long-time employees and brushing aside their legitimate concerns that a wildly defective app would besmirch Sonos's reputation and alienate its mostly devoted user base must be the courage that Spence said it took to roll out the mess.

And now the stock price is taking, the company is forced to downsize, sales targets aren't being met, the overhyped Ace headphones have hardly made a splash, other new products are delayed probably beyond the holidays, the brand is no longer recco'd by The Wirecutter among others and the new app is still buggy and not fully functional.

Remind me again why Spence remains CEO?

Agree. I came here to ask why Spence hasn’t been sacked. This mess belongs to him.

 

[Stiksi]

They should have taken a page from Apple's playbook and worked another angle -- add features that could run on devices 2-7 years old but make them exclusive to the newest model. By exploiting their customers like Apple, they will get some backlash, but at least the older devices will continue to work. Apple usually knows how to screw their customers just right to benefit themselves. Many customers will even relish in the punishment and turn around to help Apple rebuke dissenters. Sonos screwed their customers the wrong way and ended up screwing themselves.

The Apple part of this is so true it should be funny, but I just got cut out of the newest OS on my iPad and my watch and can’t laugh about it yet. Neither of them would have had any issues running the new OS and Apple fixed a lot of UI issues in it. Leaving us out of luck on the old OS.

I wonder if Sonos’s stock price will fall enough that it would be ripe for a takeover, as much as they have messed up, I would hate for them to be eaten by a megacorp. Just change the management, grow some backbone and there would still be hope for them.

 

[adamdaniel]

Why is this news? I’m sure companies go through these debates all the time.

Missing your target by $200 million due to predictable and avoidable mistakes can shatter a company. I’m not sure if this is big Apple News, but this is huge news for tech and business.

 

[USB-Adapter]

How to turn your most loyal customers into haters with an app update. Sonos. 2024.

 

[MacFarmer]

heh, I was actually planing to upgrade my sound system at home with Sonos products. But after this debacle, and other feedback, I will not do so. And for me, Sonos brand is forever tarnished.

 

[davidjbradshaw]

The new app fixed the dumb issue that you could only setup Atmos if the eArc connection also supported CEC. Now I finally have Atmos working via using a HD Fury box between the Apple TV and projector. Now that I have working Atmos I am planning to upgrade the rears to ERA300s.

Only use the App for setup, prefer AirPlay for streaming.

 

[Janichsan]

So, in short:

The c-suite lays off workers and "restructures" the company to cut costs and please the investors, throwing the company into chaos.

Then the c-suite doesn't listen to the experts and release an unfinished product to please the investors even more.

And finally, the c-suite lays off even more workers to appease the investors for the losses the c-suite's decisions caused, while the c-suite keeps their jobs.

I think, I have a pretty good idea where the problems here lie... And unfortunately, the very same problems are systemic for a lot of companies these days.

 

[wbeasley]

Patrick Spence worked for Blackberry until 2012. When he left Blackberry, it was at its absolute peak in revenue and install base. He also worked in the sales and marketing function, not the engineering or design function, and so not responsible for its product decisions that led to the companies death (years after his departure).

And then, in the 10 years since he joined Sonos, the company was on a continuous revenue growth (up until 2023FY)

In his tenure as CEO starting in 2017, to the plateau in 2023, sales just about doubled.

Please stick to facts and not emotions. I think people make mistakes and in this case they made a big mistake by rushing the headphones (that would have been a success were they WIFI compatible and not just Bluetooth) and a "new" app that still hasn't reached parity with the old one - although they are getting there.

I am happy with my Sonos system despite all of this and I hope they have learned their lesson.

from Wikipedia...

"In the year 2010, RIM and Apple continued to dominate the U.S. smartphone market, although the BlackBerry Curve had lost its spot as the single highest selling product to the iPhone 3GS.[123]

In the early 2010s, BlackBerry struggled to compete against both the iPhone and the Android platform - after device sales peaking in 2011, its share plunged in the years after, leading to speculation that it would be unable to survive as an independent going concern.[124] However, it managed to maintain significant positions in some markets.[125] BlackBerry's global user base (meaning active accounts) declined dramatically since its peak of 80 million in June 2012, dropping to 46 million users in September 2014."


Basically once Apple arrived, BlackBerry was on borrowed time. Android (which morphed into an iPhone-like interface) put the final nail in.

So Spence was there when the competition arrived and had no answer to these newcomers.

 

[Godspeed8230]

from Wikipedia...

"In the year 2010, RIM and Apple continued to dominate the U.S. smartphone market, although the BlackBerry Curve had lost its spot as the single highest selling product to the iPhone 3GS.[123]

In the early 2010s, BlackBerry struggled to compete against both the iPhone and the Android platform - after device sales peaking in 2011, its share plunged in the years after, leading to speculation that it would be unable to survive as an independent going concern.[124] However, it managed to maintain significant positions in some markets.[125] BlackBerry's global user base (meaning active accounts) declined dramatically since its peak of 80 million in June 2012, dropping to 46 million users in September 2014."


Basically once Apple arrived, BlackBerry was on borrowed time. Android (which morphed into an iPhone-like interface) put the final nail in.

So Spence was there when the competition arrived and had no answer to these newcomers.

"He also worked in the sales and marketing function, not the engineering or design function, and so not responsible for its product decisions that led to the companies death (years after his departure)."

 

[newdeal]

I haven't used this app in a while I used to have a bunch of Sonos speakers from Ikea at work but now I am not there anymore. That said I always found the app was terrible so I can't even imagine if they actually made it worse. First step in the right direction would be to allow system control when the mobile device is not on the same network

 

[wbeasley]

"He also worked in the sales and marketing function, not the engineering or design function, and so not responsible for its product decisions that led to the companies death (years after his departure)."

so a PR huckster with little product knowledge?

you'd think though that being on the customer side of the team should have meant warning bells rang out loud when they were being told the new app wouldnt do everything the old one did...

surely anyone in marketing would red flag that?